Condi is not to be trusted by the GOP. Her allegiance is to people who are presently literally part of Obama’s foreign policy. Yes, I’m not kidding. Baker is in Obama’s team and that is the Saudi lobby. She might of grown up near Bibi’s family house in Colorado, but her bread got buttered by Aramco/Chevron and that allegiance to it’s board is still there. I could never see demonizing oil companies, but it is time to discriminate between obtaining oil locally in North America and being a slave to interests in the status quo in the Arabian peninsula and North Africa.

“When you look at where we are now, we’re a long, long way back from where we were,” Rice said in an interview with AP.Rice said she had hoped that the Obama administration could revive stalled peace talks quickly when it took office in 2009, but she said she was disappointed by the new administration’s handling of the delicate issue of new Israeli housing construction in the West Bank.“I do think focusing on settlements in that particular way was a mistake,” Rice said. “The parties then were able to have a reason not to sit down.”The gulf has only widened, Rice said, “and they’re running out of time.” She did not sound optimistic for a settlement soon, or even for new talks. “When they’re not talking, they’re sliding backward,” Rice said.…Rice herself had called settlement building unhelpful and was infuriated when Israel appeared to undercut her by announcing new building licenses hard on the heels of some of her diplomatic visits.But new Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, took a much harder line in the spring of 2009, demanding a full freeze on any building.Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements,” including the expansion of existing developments, Clinton said in May of that year.With Israelis suspicious of Obama even before he assumed office, the settlement position further unnerved them. The Palestinians, initially encouraged, became disillusioned when the U.S. was unable to persuade Israel to freeze settlement construction.

She’s obviously angling to get her old job back in a Republican administration in 2013. Someone please tell me it will be Bolton instead.

she just said: “the U.S. was unable to persuade Israel to freeze settlement construction. “? Not true at all and she would know this. The Israelis did stop for what was agreed (a little less the a year), but got no cooperation from the Arabs.

The basic reality is you have a nonexistent peace process,” said Aaron Miller, a former Middle East negotiator now at the Wilson Center, a think tank. via online.wsj.com

George Mitchell, Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace, will step down after a frustrating two and a half years seeking to jump-start the stalemated Israeli-Palestinian peace process. via news.yahoo.com

Mitchell: Under American law, the U.S. can withhold support on loan guarantees to Israel. President George W. Bush did so on one occasion. But we think the way to approach this is to try to persuade the parties what is in their self-interest

Charlie Rose talks to Mideast envoy George Mitchell and believes that the U.S. can leverage Israel with financial threats, but the truth is that the U.S. is in no situation financially to be making any kind of fiscal threats at all. In fact it is Israel that could be making financial threats to the United States

As of September 2009, Israel’s foreign debt totals $28 billion. Meanwhile, the State of Israel’s foreign currency reserves total $60 billion. Most of them are invested in US government bonds. That is, the Israeli government’s foreign debt stands at -$32 billion. Or in other words, at this time we, Israelis, are financing America’s debts – and not the other way around.”

At this time too, the Israeli government is embarrassed to tell the US administration what needs to be said: Please, take back your loan guarantees. In the coming decade we probably will not need them, while you may very well need them. The Administration economists I met know this well.

People who still speak about “US economic pressure on Israel via loan guarantees” are completely disconnected from reality. Israel is now helping the US pay its deficits, and not the other way around. This is why we were laughing, the American economists and myself, when the issue of loan guarantees came up in our conversation. I was laughing happily; they were laughing somewhat sadly.

So called peace according to Fatah of Palestine would imply that NATO and the U.S. have sovereignty over Israel over the protection of it’s borders. Translation: Of course Fatah is like negotiating with no one, so essentially the deal means Israel can no longer protect itself and Palestine does not follow it’s own promises.

(JPost)–The Palestinian Authority is considering allowing the permanent stationing of NATO forces in the future Palestinian state, London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi reported Palestinian sources saying Wednesday.The NATO forces would be able to prevent arms smuggling into the future state and to monitor that it would remain demilitarized.Under any peace agreement likely to be formulated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Israel would expect the Palestinian entity to remain demilitarized.The Palestinian Authority will also ask NATO and the US to commit to “defending the Palestinian state from Israel,” were relations to break down and were Israel to threaten the future Palestinian state with invasion, the report said.US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Wednesday afternoon. According to the report, Abbas would be making this offer and request in the meeting

…without unilateral concessions on property in Jerusalem where Jewish people live and can not prosper and survive without building as needed :

Mahmoud Abbas said Jerusalem was “the gate to peace” in the Middle East

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has ruled out attending indirect “proximity talks” with Israel unless it halts the construction of settlements.

Mr Abbas told an Arab League summit he would not resume negotiations as long as Israel maintained the “status quo” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He was seeking support after Israel appeared to refuse to back down in a row with the US over East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Israeli tanks have withdrawn from Gaza after an overnight incursion. It came after the killing of two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian militants in the worst fighting in the territory for more than a year. Hamas said its fighters had been involved in the initial border clash, but insisted their actions were defensive. Israel said it began when its troops spotted militants planting explosives along the border. Reports said one Palestinian was killed during the Israeli incursion. ‘Madness’In a speech to the Arab League summit in the Libyan town of Sirte on Saturday, President Abbas demanded an immediate end to Israel’s building on occupied territory, particularly East Jerusalem.

We have to have alternative plans because the situation has reached a turning point

Amr MoussaSecretary-Genera, Arab League

“We cannot resume indirect negotiations as long as Israel maintains its settlement policy and the status quo,” he said. “Negotiations on the borders [of a future Palestinian state] would be absurd if Israel decides on the ground the border,” he added. “We have always said that Jerusalem is the jewel in the crown and the gate to peace.” Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are held illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a guest of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, described the Israeli position as “madness”.

“This leads Israel to isolation,” he told the conference. “By adopting such an attitude, Israel is not only violating international law, but also violating human feelings, conscience and history.” The Arab League’s Secretary-General, Amr Moussa, said its member states should prepare for the possibility of the peace process’s “complete failure”. “It’s time to face Israel. We have to have alternative plans because the situation has reached a turning point,” he added. The UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile urged Arab leaders to continue supporting US efforts to revive the peace talks. He said Jerusalem’s significance should be respected, and that the city “should emerge from negotiations as the capital of two states”. The BBC’s Rana Jawad, in Tripoli, says this is the first time the UN has specified what it would like to result from the talks about Jerusalem. The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, welcomed the statement, telling the BBC it was “the right course for a solution in accordance with international law”. At the end of the two-day gathering in Libya, the Arab League is expected to adopt a new resolution to include a plan to establish a commission of legal advisors to pursue cases in international courts regarding East Jerusalem, our correspondent says. ‘Narrowing of the gaps’Israel’s approval two weeks ago of plans for 1,600 new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo prompted the Palestinians to pull out of the proximity talks mediated by the US special envoy, George Mitchell, which both sides had only just agreed to attend.

[Mr Netanyahu’s] position is that there is no change in Israel’s policy on Jerusalem that has been pursued by all governments of Israel for the last 42 years

Israeli prime minister’s office

Unveiled at the start of a visit to the Middle East by US Vice-President Joe Biden, the decision caused one of the worst crises in US-Israeli ties for decades. During a visit to Washington last week, the White House tried to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to commit to several confidence-building measures to persuade Mr Abbas to return to the talks. A senior Palestinian Authority official has told the BBC that to re-enter the indirect negotiations it would require assurances that the Ramat Shlomo project would not be implemented for at least three years, and that the Israelis would not “continue to take actions which destroy our credibility”. An Israeli government spokesman said on Friday there had been a “narrowing of the gaps” between Israel and the US, but Mr Netanyahu stressed there had been “no change in Israel’s policy on Jerusalem”. In November, Mr Netanyahu announced a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank. But his government considers areas within the Jerusalem municipality as Israeli territory and thus not subject to the restrictions.

An Arab political source said Friday that special U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell has requested to resign due to his frustration with the way the Obama administration has been handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a Nazareth-based daily.

Hadith a-Nass reported that Mitchell’s request stemmed partly from to his own failure to advance the resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and also from his perception that certain elements within the State Department hold biased favor toward Israel.

The White House turned down Mitchell’s request, according to Hadith a-Nass.

….hokey pokey …doing the Kansas City Shuffle. Obama’s slick moves become transparent after a while. He isn’t fooling anyone. If anything Mitchell could be a little to the right of Barrack. they aren’t fooling anyone. They are both fiends and neither one of them are going to resign. let them both sulk in a corner. do not negotiate with terrorists